In games featuring tactical combat (particularly strategy games), players expects their units/characters to fulfill every order to the best of their capacity, e.g. by performing a heroic Last Stand when ordered. Some games, however, feature an improved AI that starts to ignore player's (human or computer) orders when faced with overwhelming odds and instead attempts to flee or to yield.

Morale mechanics usually concern conditions under which the AI will decide to escape rather than continue or even start fighting, such as:

Depending on the implementation, the game may either run a randomized morale check whenever these conditions occur, or slowly chip away at each unit's morale until it flees. Either way, advanced units will typically be more resistant to morale loss than more basic ones. Occasionally, enemy morale may be broken artificially via Standard Status Effects like "Fear" and "Confuse".

In Ninja Gaiden 3, using the fire dragon Ninpo will cause the weakest enemies around to drop their weapons, cower and beg for their lives. If you so chose, you can finish them off regardless.

The Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series eats and breathes morale. Morale determines who wins the battles when you're not in the area, and can make enemies harder to fight if they have a lot of it. You can reduce overall enemy morale and raise your own by killing troops, defeating enemies, and activating (or preventing) certain events. It's taken even farther in Samurai warriors, where individual troops have their own morale. Killing a troops leader causes him to run off. Defeating an officer has the potential of making everyone run.

Real Time Strategy

Most infantry units in the Dawn of War series have a morale score, and certain weapons, among them sniper rifles and flamethrowers, do less physical damage but massive morale damage. Demoralized troops won't run away on their own, but they can't shoot straight and they run faster. Space Marine sergeants have the ability to restore squad morale, and so do the Imperial Guard Commissars—though the latter usually includes summarily executing a member of the squad in front of the others.

The Total War series implement Morale Mechanic for armies. One of the best ways to decimate a unit or entire army's morale is to kill its commander.

Web GamesWarfare 1917 and Warfare 1944. Both the player's and the opposing forces have a morale rating that can increase (by killing enemy troops or deploying an officer/tank) or decrease (when your own troops/tanks are killed). If either side's morale reaches zero it surrenders and the other side gets an immediate "morale victory".

Morale in Mount & Blade affects how aggressively your army fights and reduces the chance of your troops deserting, and is decided by a number of factors, including your leadership skill, how many battles you've won, what types of food you give as rations, which companions you hire and whether or not you're at war with the faction a particular unit associates with.

Lords Of The Realm 3 (being somewhat of a Follow the Leader of Total War) uses morale for each of your units, the base of which is modified by several factors such as your chivalry rating, unit type, and whether the opponent is showing No Quarter (a morale increase; your soldiers are aware that fleeing is more dangerous than fighting). Then, once the fighting starts, morale can increase on victory, or decrease on bad situations or excessive losses, until the unit eventually routs. Some unit types, such as Scottish Highlanders, start with such high morale that they will almost always fight to the death.

Role-Playing Games

The Baldur's Gate series, based on D&D, had morale rolls for human and nonhuman mooks.

Enemies in some Final Fantasy games opt to run away when faced with overwhelming odds.

In Final Fantasy I, enemies would start randomly fleeing from you as your party levelled up.

Final Fantasy IV had early on groups of three soldiers, two troops and a commander. If you defeated the troops, the commandernote Who has no actual attack mechanics beyond ordering his troops to attack would flee. Strangely, the inverse does not happen.

Final Fantasy Tactics did include "Bravery" as a morale mechanic in combat; if dropped to single digits, the unit would literally turn into a chicken and avoid battle; a player character whose out-of-battle Bravery was dropped too low would leave the party forever (except Ramza).

Kingdom Hearts II has three missions like this in the Land of Dragons, where Sora, Donald, and Goofy have to help Mulan defend the camp from the Heartless. The second has them scout the area outside the camp for enemy reinforcements, and the final one has them clear a path up the mountain pass to reach the village near the summit. All three missions are timed. If either time runs out before all Heartless are eliminated, or if the morale meter runs empty, the mission ends in failure and the player has to repeat it.

In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, when a humanoid enemy (usually bandits or civilians) reach a certain health threshold, they drop to the ground while crying out for mercy or declaring their surrender. Sometimes subverted when they run away, only to heal and attack again.

This is the most important game mechanic in The Last Remnant. When your ally morale is at blue, then you can deal more damage to the enemy; however, if the enemy gauge is at red instead, then enemies will have severe advantages against you. In addition, there's also the Union Morale which has a small yellow gauge at the leader of the union's stats. If it's full, then the union leader may unleash a Limit Break.

Simulation Games

NPC ships other than capital ships and military transports in the X-Universe games have a static and randomly determined "morale" stat that factors into the calculation on whether or not they will bail out of their ships when fired upon. This is not visible in-game and was uncovered by the modding community.

In the space colony management / survival sim RimWorld, every character has a mood meter, which reflects their general satisfaction with the state of the colony and their personal quality of life. Too many negative thoughts can push a colonist into a mental breakdown.

Stealth-Based Games

Morale is a stat in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker which is influenced by Mother Base's available food supply and certain unique character special abilities which boost morale for their unit (e.g. Miller boosts whichever team he's currently on). A soldiers morale will drop massively if they are forced to work while sick or injured. If a soldier's morale is high enough they get a boost to both combat and noncombat skills, while if morale hits rock bottom they may permanently leave the unit.

Tabletop Games

Dungeons & Dragons had a Morale score for each monster or NPC (enemy or ally), as well as Resist Fear saving throws. Failing the latter caused the monster to panic and run away. There were, however, fearless monsters, such as the basic undead that lack self-preservation instinct. It also had spells like Fear, which caused the same effects as regular panic attacks and could be resisted in the same way (albeit at a penalty)—"had" being the operative term. While magical fear effects and such things as "morale" bonuses and penalties to e.g. attacks and saving throws were retained, the morale mechanic was dropped from the game with the advent of its third edition... presumably leading to an overall increase in NPC casualty rates at gaming tables across the globe.

In Ironclaw and Myriad Song characters (both NPC and PC) who take at least two damage from a single hit become Afraid and cannot attack until rallied by their Leader or after hiding for a round. And if someone is Overkilled (six or more damage) all of their nearby allies are scared.

In Hc Svnt Dracones each side of a battle has a "Nerve Pool" that is reduced whenever a combatant takes damage or suffers a near-miss. When a side's Nerve pool drops to a certain threshold, ranging from 50% for Enemies of Circumstance to "To the Death" for Relentless Enemies, they usually surrender or attempt to parley.

Avalon Hill's Squad Leader had extensive rules for handling unit morale: how and when troops broke and rallied.

The "forced withdrawal" rules in BattleTech act as this if used — a unit that has been damaged sufficiently badly but is still mobile is forced to try to retreat to its side's designated "home edge" and withdraw off the map. (An immobilized unit suffering the same fate will usually power down or otherwise indicate surrender under the same rules rather than try to fight to the bitter end.)

Each model in the game has a Leadership value, ranging from 1 to 10 (with 7 being the average human leadership), and at the end of each round of close combat all units on the losing side have to take a "break test" against their Leadership on 2D6 (i.e. roll two dice and score equal to or under their Leadership value) or break and run away. Victorious units, provided they aren't still tied up with other enemy, can then pursue them (and wipe them out if they catch them). The break test is modified depending on how badly the unit lost, calculated on how many casualties it suffered and other factors, by imposing a penalty to Leadership equal to the difference between the winning and losing side's combat result scores. Similar tests to hold or flee are applied in certain other tense situations, such as having a friendly unit wiped out close by, getting charged in the flank when already engaged to the front, or being confronted by terrifying enemies charging straight at you.

There is also the Fear Test, which is taken at the beginning of every combat round if engaged by fearsome enemies - failure reduces the unit's Weapon Skill characteristic to 1 for the turn.

Certain special units and characters in the game do not have to take break or psychology tests, because they are either supernatural, unfeeling or somehow crazed. Of particular note here are all types of undead and daemons, crazed flagellants, death-seeking Dwarf Trollslayers and mindless Chaos Spawn. Such troops are very valuable indeed, as they can be relied upon to fight to the last man, rather than turn tail and flee if the tide of battle goes against them. Certain brave and highly disciplined, but not suicidally crazy, troops instead have the "Stubborn" rule, which means they always test on their unmodified leadership, and so are much more likely to stick around against long odds.

Warhammer 40,000 has similar psychology and break rules to the original Warhammer, though they have diverged slightly over the years.

Turn-Based Strategy

Heroes of Might and Magic games include a morale modifier. High morale gives a unit a chance to attack a second time, against the normal rules of Turn-Based Combat, while low morale makes them flinch and miss a turn. Morale bonuses are activated randomly, based on how high morale is: Geo Effects, artefacts, single-race armies, spells, angels and taverns all raise morale, while skeletons, dark dragons and ransacking empty tombs all lower it.

In Civilization and Master of Magic, morale translates into loyalty of the populace and thus improves productivity of cities. In Civilization, There are also "Morale" promotions for units, which simply improves unit strength. In IV, it's just a normal promotion choice. In V, it's given to units trained in the city that has created that civ's Heroic Epic.

The Civil War Generals games also have a morale mechanic for individual regiments / brigades. In fact, the game manuals explain at length that maintaining morale during Civil War battles tended to be much more important than actually killing the opposition. This is reflected in-game by the kill counts being relatively small, but desertions and captures numbering in the thousands after a decisive battle.

Jagged Alliance 2 has a morale mechanic which is raised by successfully killing enemies, teaming up friends, and liberating towns, and lowered by getting hurt, retreating, losing towns, and teaming up people who don't like each other. Mercenaries that are in a good mood will perform better and have exultant remarks and laughter during battle, while unhappy mercenaries will perform worse, disobey orders, complain, and possibly even permanently quit.

Turn-Based Tactics

The Steel Panthers game has a Suppression mechanic, which indicates how rattled a unit is after coming under fire. Units under high suppression can be pinned down and refuse to move, or even forced to retreat, until they can be rallied.

The morale rules have the side effect of making the German Mk I tank much more useful against the Russians than it should be. Early on, the Soviet KV heavy tanks are just about immune to the guns of the available German panzers. That goes double for the Mk I as it only has machine guns. However the Mk Is are cheap to buy and fire six times a turn so the inexperienced Soviet crews can be panicked by a storm of machine gun fire even though it can't actually hurt them.

In X-COM, your soldiers can end up in the Panicking state, where they will fire at each other and charge to useless locations, as a result of casualties or psychic attack. The presence of a high-ranking officer can reduce morale loss from casualties, but an officer's death has a larger effect on morale.

In the remake XCOM: Enemy Unknown, casualties and Muton intimidation can cause panic. On the strategic level, all countries on the Council have a Panic level, which increases if the country suffers an alien attack and decreases if attacks are successfully repelled. Once the panic in a country reaches the maximum and stays there for an extended time (usually 10-15 days), it will cut all funding and secede from the Council, ostensibly to focus their efforts and funding on their panicking, rioting population. Losing eight countries this way results in an immediate Game Over.

Graviteam Tactics: Troop morale is connected to the soldiers' experience, fatigue, and the capability of the higher commander to "be in command". Setbacks (e.g. heavy casualties, heavy fire, squad leader killed) will result in the troops panicking and running away.

Morale determines turn order in both Dynasty Tactics games.

Wide-Open Sandbox

Grand Theft Auto IV featured lots of enemies that surrender when reduced to a single segment of health, somewhere between 5% and 10% of their total health.

Brutally kill a few guards in the Assassin's Creed series and some or all of the rest may flee.

EV Nova includes a mechanic that calculates the ratio of enemy strengthnote calculated as the arbitrary Strength stats of a ship type involved in combat x the quantity of that ship to friendly strength and compares it to a ratio specified for their faction, above which they will attempt to retreat rather than continue fighting.

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